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Politicizing Science
grape jelly writes "A new website has been created by Rep. Harry A. Waxman, of California, by the name of Politics and Science that accuses the current administration of intentionally manipulating scientific data in order to further its ideology. The site was created as a result of a congressional report (pdf) request by Rep. Waxman, available on his site. A NYTimes article is also available about the report with a response from the administration."
Seems to me that the government has been manipulating and misrepresenting "scientific" data for a long time. Let's see, "marijuana makes you violent" came in the 40's as I recall, and there are plenty of other examples. This is nothing new with this administration.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Here's a brief rundown of his contributors, looks like a run of the mill democrat stooge for labor unions, trial lawyers, and the entertainment industry.
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There is a big difference (in legal terms) between lying in a speech and lying under oath. Lying in a speech called a campaign promise. Lying under oath is called perjury. Little "details" like that are what make the Rule of Law work. If you start ignoring them, the whole system falls apart.
All information will be politicized, not just what comes from scientific investigation.
The only defense for scientists is to continue to pursue the truth, postulate hypotheses, and to ask questions and get answers about the validity of those hypotheses.
Honestly, what this world needs is less politics in science and more science in politics.
Politics is so heavily weighted in emotion and personality that I hold out little hope of rational and critical thought making any more than a stage appearance in government.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
ASHINGTON, Aug. 7 -- The Bush administration persistently manipulates scientific data to serve its ideology and protect the interests of its political supporters, a report by the minority staff of the House Committee on Government Reform says.
The 40-page report, which was prepared for Representative Henry A. Waxman, the committee's ranking Democrat, accused the administration of compromising the scientific integrity of federal institutions that monitor food and medicine, conduct health research, control disease and protect the environment.
On many topics, including global warming and sex education, the administration "has manipulated the scientific process and distorted or suppressed scientific findings," the report said.
"The administration's political interference with science has led to misleading statements by the president, inaccurate responses to Congress, altered Web sites, suppressed agency reports, erroneous international communications and the gagging of scientists," the report added.
The White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, dismissed the report. He contended that its sponsor, Mr. Waxman, who is widely known for his aggressive inquiry into the tobacco industry, was seeking to score political points.
"This administration looks at the facts, and reviews the best available science based on what's right for the American people," Mr. McClellan said. "The only one who is playing politics about science is Congressman Waxman. His report is riddled with distortion, inaccuracies and omissions."
Some of the examples from the report's 21 subject areas have already been reported in the media. They include the Environmental Protection Agency's decision last year to delete a section on global warming in its comprehensive report on the state of the environment and President Bush's overstatement of the number of stem cell lines available for research under controls imposed by the administration.
The report's authors say federal agencies have jeopardized scientific integrity in many ways, including stacking scientific advisory committees with unqualified officials or industry representatives, blocking publication of findings that could harm corporate interests and defending controversial decisions with misleading information.
With respect to sex education, the report said, the Bush administration has advanced what the report described as an unproven "abstinence only" agenda and abolished an initiative at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that listed scientifically validated safe-sex techniques that included using condoms.
On agricultural pollution, the Agriculture Department has issued tight controls on government scientists seeking to publish information that could have an adverse impact on industry, the report said. It cited the case of a microbiologist, James Zahn, who was denied permission to publish findings on the dangers of antibiotic-resistant bacteria near hog farms in the Midwest.
On the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the report said that Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton, a firm advocate of drilling for oil in the region, misrepresented to Congress her agency's scientific opinion on how drilling would affect the region's caribou population. She told lawmakers most of the caribou calving occurred outside the refuge; her scientists said the opposite was true.
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
Today, it's actually a necessity. You can find a study to say whatever you want; depending on the model, experimental methods, statistical methods, and a dozen other variables. People who act on research must filter through what is discovered, and decide what they think is true.
There are studies that prove global warming is currently killing thousands, and others that prove that it never exsisted, is a natural process, or is being/has been reversed. DTT is a killer, and the guy that did the study did it wrong/no he didn't. There is/is not a "gay gene".
Adminstration has to filter through these reports and determine which ones are correct, because they can't all be correct. Is it surprising that they would pick the ones that best fit their agenda? Even when you take good advisors into account, these advisors must be selected by the administration. Who's best? How does the administration pick their advisors? The same way they would pick which study to believe: Based on what they already think is true, or whatever best fits into their perception of how the world works. No matter how open minded and unbiased they (the admin) tries to be, they won't be, can't be unbiased. They will still lean towards what they had previously believed. And they won't be easily swayed, because any data that comes out contradicting what they believe can be countered by some other piece of (just as accurate) data that was gathered under slightly different conditions.
I guess the only real way around it would be to have advisory panels staffed by the scientists with the opposing views. Even then, though...many, if not most, scientists are severely lacking in interpersonal skills (I say this as a scientist severely lacking in interpersonal skills), so those panels would get little done, especially when several of the people in the room have been butting heads for decades.
My sig seems even more appropriate than usual today...
There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.
I did check out the website. He seems to be among a group of people these days who want to disbelieve any scientific result that is generally accepted. Practically all immune researchers believe HIV causes AIDS? They must be wrong! The establishment didn't accept Velikovsky? He must have been right! This attitude appears to come from an UNcritical distrust of authority. Just being dismissed by the authorities doesn't make an idea worthy of serious consideration. They may well have laughed at Galileo, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
It just does not matter.
Or, rather, it shouldn't matter. But it does. Look at the areas of science that the report alleges has been misstated and/or slanted. Note the bent towards morality/reproductive issues like the impact of abortion on breast cancer, stem-cell research, condom use and abstinence-only education. Clinton was a Baptist but I've never heard anyone allege that Clinton attempted to hide good science that disagreed with his base.
Bush is abusing our nation's scientific infrastructure to push his fundamentalist Christian worldview (which, in contradiction to your assertion is not the worldview of the majority of our nation's Christians) on an unsuspecting populace with the potential for dangerous results (e.g. higher STD transmission rates/teen pregancy in populations underserved by sex education who hear only about abstinence).
This is dangerous behaviour and regardless of your political bent (admittedly I'm a slightly-left-of-center scientist) you should be concerned about government actively working to obscure the truth. Politicking is one thing, actively working to lie to young women seeking abortions and scaring them into believing they might get breast cancer for their troubles is quite another.
-j
They rely on people having factually incorrect data on global warming, birth control, etc. A Scientific worldview and a conservate worldview are as incompatable today as they were in the days of Galieo and Darwin.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
" Science finds objectives truths. Since science constiently comes out against conservatives on many issues"
Liberals come out against conservatives. "Science" rarely does, as it is not a policy matter.
"They rely on people having factually incorrect data on global warming, birth control, etc"
At this time, the conservatives tend to hold more to the real science on global warming (instead of silly fad "theories" in which someone has a political axe to grind so they make up "we are warming the earth" fictions). "Birth control" is not a science controversy at this time, so I do not know why you mentioned it.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
"Do I think that means we should just indiscriminately dump CO2 into the atmosphere?"
It might mean that we should worry more about species extinction, habitat destruction, pollution with real toxins, and other environmental issues which get shoved to the back burner when "Global Warming" grabs the headlines.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The big "putty" problem seems to be that beginning with shuttle flight 10, pre-flight tests of the joints were conducted at higher pressures than before, leading to the formation of bubbles and "blowholes" in the putty. The hot gases followed these paths of weakness to the O-ring. In 1984, a NASA engineer derided the use of putty at all as "lucky putty", suggesting that the putty introduced an extra point of failure and was probably unnecessary. His suggestions for study on this issue were not followed up. I got my information here. This page quotes extensively from the Challenger report, Richard Feynman, and from authors making the "environmentalists did it" claims.
For someone complaining about fearmongering, it's curious that James Hogan is telling us how dangerous evironmentalists are with their "junk science", yet he is using incorrect information that it took me 5 minutes with Google to refute. It's funny how people always claim that their side is objective and everyone else is "politicizing" science. This is most definitely not limited to any one viewpoint on the political spectrum.
I didn't see any 'facts' mentioning that the coal-burning electric plants in the US put out more nuclear radiation in a single day than the incident at 3 Mile Island did.
Oh, right, because dems are anti-nuke and this site only serves to pick political fights.
If someone wants to put up a site citing real science on the litany of hypocritical positions politicians take, great, but let's call this thing what it is: politics.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
And Christianity was made up by some guy 2000 years ago. So how long does wicca have to be around before it's a "real religion"? How about Mormons, do they have a real religion, or is the fact that The Church of Latter Day Saints is 150 years or so old mean it has enough seniority in your opinion to count? Somehow I missed the part of the constitution that said the President got to decide what was or wasn't a "real" religion.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
*applause*. I'm reminded of a .sig where someone observed the following:
There aren't too many people on the left or right) that would argue that. A leftie might phrase it differently - speaking of "heartless Republicans" and "those striving for social justice" - but would likely agree with the point.
The odd part is that if you replace "left" with "right", and "economic" with "social", you still end up with a statement that both sides would take as a compliment.